[SPOILERS??] There are no direct spoilers of the “So and So dies” sort in this post, but it assumes you are pretty much up to date on the current season of The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead has become Negan. I mean the show itself.

Negan brings to the show a principle of chaos: you never know who he’s going to bash to death. This puts all the characters at risk, although perhaps some less so than others based on their fan-base attachments.

That adds some threat and tension of the sort that Game of Thrones used to have. But only if it’s a principle of chaos embedded within a narrative structure and set of characters that we care about. And for the prior season and the current one, there’s almost no narrative structure and, frankly, not that many characters who don’t feel like narrative artifices.

As a result, the main tension in the current season is exactly the same as it was at the beginning of last season when we waited to find out who Negan would choose to bash to death. Negan was so random that “the viewer discussions generally were attempts to anticipate what the writers wanted to do to us”the viewer discussions generally were attempts to anticipate what the writers wanted to do to us. They had to kill someone significant or else the threat level would go down. But they couldn’t kill so-and-so because s/he was too popular, or whatever. There were no intrinsic reasons why Negan would chose one victim over another — Wild Card! — so the reasons had to have to do with audience retention.

This entire season is random in that bad way. The writers are now Negan, choosing randomly among Team Rick’s characters. They’re going to kill off someone for some ratings-based reason, and we’re just waiting for them to make up their mind.

The series didn’t start out this way. It had characters in conflict, and characters in arcs. Rick and The Punisher. Carol and her sister. Daryl and his other brother Daryl. Gingerbeard and The Mullet. Now there’s nothing, maybe because every character’s arc has been the same: S/he becomes an empowered action star.

There are still some things I like about the show. For example, it’s heartening to watch them work on the female empowerment, although it’d be more interesting if they didn’t all become like Rick. And Negan is a pretty good villain. Sure, I could do with fewer predictable charming smiles, but he’s scary.

But I’ll be damned if in the last episode of this series [MADE-UP SPOILERS AHEAD] Team Rick (which will probably be Team Maggie by then) realizes that it has become Negan. I’ll be especially pissed off if the last shot is of the dying Jesus saying, “We are Negan.” Star wipe. Out. Puke.

It’s actually the first essay in the book, which obviously is not arranged in order of preference, but probably means at least the editors didn’t hate it.

The next day: Thanks to a tweet by Siva Vaidhyanathan, I and a lot of people on Twitter have realized that all but one of the authors in this volume are male. I’d simply said yes to the editors’ request to re-publish my article. It didn’t occur to me to ask to see the rest of the roster even though this is an issue I care about deeply. LARB seems to feature diverse writers overall, but apparently not so much in tech.

The hosts of the BardCast podcast consider Cymbeline to probably be Shakespeare’s worst play. Not enough happens in the first two acts, the plot is kuh-razy, it’s a mishmash of styles and cultures, and it over-explains itself time and time again. That podcast is far from alone in thinking that it’s the Bard’s worst, although, as BardCast says, even the Bard’s worst is better than just about anything. Nevertheless, when was the last time you saw a performance of Cymbeline? Yeah, me neither.

We saw it yesterday afternoon, in its final performance at Shakespeare & Co in Lenox, Mass. It was fantastic: hilarious, satisfactorily coherent (which is praiseworthy because the plot is indeed crazy), and at times moving.

It was directed by the founder of the company, Tina Packer, and showed her usual commitment to modernizing Shakespeare by finding every emotional tone and every laugh in the original script. The actors enunciate clearly, but since we modern folk don’t understand many of the words and misunderstand more than that, the actors use body language, cues, and incredibly well worked out staging to make their meaning clear. We used to take our young children to Shakespeare & Co. shows, and they loved them.

I’m open to being convinced by a Shakespeare scholar that the Shakespeare & Co.’s Cymbeline was a travesty that had nothing to do with Shakespeare’s intentions, even though the players said all the words he wrote and honored the words’ magnificence. I’m willing to acknowledge that, for example, when Imogen and King Cymbeline offer each other words of condolence about the death of the wicked, wicked queen, Shakespeare didn’t think they’d wait a beat and then burst out laughing. But when Posthumus comes before the King at the end, bemoaning the death of his beloved Imogen, I would not be surprised if Shakespeare were to nod in appreciation as in this production the audience bursts into loud laughter because Imogen, still in disguise as a boy, is scrambling towards Posthumus, gesticulating ever more wildly that she is in fact she for whom he mourns. Did Shakespeare intend that? Probably not. Does it work? One hundred percent.

These two embellishments are emblematic of the problem with the play. In that final scene, it is revealed to the King in a single speech that the Queen he has loved for decades in fact always hated him, tried to poison him, and was a horrible, horrible person. There’s little or nothing in the play that explains how the King could not have had an inkling of this, and he seems to get over the sudden revelation of his mate’s iniquity in a heartbeat so that the scene can get on with its endless explication. The laugh he shares with his daughter gets a huge laugh from the audience, but only because the words of sorrow Shakespeare gives the King and Imogen seem undeserved for a Queen so resolutely evil; the addition of the laugh solves a problem with the script. Likewise, Imogen’s scramble toward Posthumus, waving her arms in a “Hey, I’m right here!” gesture, turns Posthumus’ mournful declaration of his devastation at the death of Imogen into comic over-statement.

To be clear, most of the interpretations seem to bring Shakespeare’s intentions to life, even if unexpected ways. For example, Jason Aspry’s Cloten was far different from the thuggish and thoroughly villainous character we expected. Asprey played him hilariously as a preening coward. This had me concerned because I knew that he is killed mid-play in a fight with the older of two young princes who have been brought up in a cave. (It’s a weird plot.) How can the prince kill such an enjoyable buffoon without making us feel like someone casually shot Capt. Jack Sparrow halfway through the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie? But the staging and the acting is so well done that, amazingly, the biggest laugh of the show came when the prince enters the stage holding Cloten’s severed head. (Don’t judge me. You would have laughed, too.)

So, this may well be Shakespeare’s worst play. If so, it got a performance that found everything good in it, and then some.

I do want to at least mention the brilliance and commitment of the actors. Some we have been seeing every summer for decades, and others are new or newer to us. But this is an amazing group. Among the cast members who were new to us, Ella Loudon was amazing as the older prince. I feel bad singling anyone out, but, there, I did it.

Finally, Shakespeare & Co. doesn’t post videos of performances of their plays after they’ve run. It makes me heartsick that they do not. I’ve asked them about this in past, and apparently the problem is with the actors’ union. I was brought up in a pro-union household and continue to be favorably inclined toward them, but I wish there were a way to work this out. It’d be good for the world to be able to see these exceptional performances and come to love Shakespeare.
It would of course also be good for Shakespeare & Co.

I’d rephrase that a bit. I think it was a dumb, predictable, boring movie with a couple of nice landscape shots. We went to see it on one of our few movie nights out because we’d enjoyed the first two in this series.

If WARPA weren’t about apes but was instead about the actual human ism‘s it intends to get us to see from the Other’s perspective — racism, colonialism, militarism — we’d view it as embarrassingly trite and shallow. Casting apes as the victims doesn’t make it any less so.

It doesn’t help that while the facial animations are incredible, the ape bodies look like pretty good animations of people wearing ape suits. Plus, I have to say that these apes’ lack of genitalia or assholes diminishes the vividness of the premise of the movie: the apes we’ve treated as an inferior species are deserving of respect and dignity. Instead, we get damn, dirty hairy aliens.

But most of all, there isn’t a cliche the movie doesn’t miss. If you’re sitting in your seat thinking that the next obvious thing to happen is X, then X will happen. Guaranteed. The only surprises are the plot holes, of which there are many.

The music is bad in itself and is used as a cudgel. They might as well have skipped the music and just put in subtitles like “Feel sorrow here.”

Full marks to Andy Serkis and the motion capture crew. As others have suggested, he deserves his Special Achievement Oscar already. Well, he deserved it for Lord of the Rings, but his work in this movie is absolutely its highlight. Steve Zahn also has a good turn as the comic relief. But poor Woody Harrelson is stuck with ridiculous lines and a clumsy narrative attempt to give his character some depth. His best moment is when he shaves his head in one of the movie’s embarrassing flags that it thinks it’s on a par with films like Apocalypse Now.

Also, this movie is no fun. It’s grim. It’s boring. It’s unfair to the humans.

That last point is not a political complaint because lord knows we deserve all the monkey feces thrown at us. It’s instead a complaint about the shallowness of the movie-making.

[NO SPOILERS YET] Ricky Gervais’ new TV movie, Life on the Road, now on Netflix, suffers from the sort of mortifying errors committed by its protagonist, David Brent, the manager of The Office with whom the movie catches us up.

[TINY SPOILERS THAT WON’T SPOIL ANYTHING] The movie is amusing in some of the main ways the original The Office was. David Brent is an unself-knowing narcissist surrounded by people who see through him. It lacks the utterly charming office romance between Tim and Dawn (Jim and Pam in the US version). It lacks any other villain than Brent, unlike Gareth in the original (Dwight in the US version). It lacks the satire of office life, offering instead a satire of self-funded, doomed rock tour by an unknown, pudgy, middle-aged man. That’s not a thing, so you can’t really satirize it.

Still, Gervais is great as Brent, having honed uncomfortable self-presentation to an art, complete with a squealing giggle that alerts us to his inability to be ashamed of himself. And Gervais sings surprisingly well.

[SPOILERS] But then it ends suddenly with Brent being accepted by his band, by the office where he’s been working as a bathroom-supply salesperson, and by a woman. Nothing prepares us for this except that it’s the end of the movie and Gervais wants to give his character some peace and dignity. It’s some extraordinarily sloppy writing.

Worse, the ending seems way too close to what Gervais himself seems to want. Like Brent, he wants to be taken seriously as a musician and singer, except that Gervais’s songs are self-knowingly bad, in the style of Spinal Tap except racist. Still, you leave the movie surprised that he’s that good a singer and that the songs are quite good as comic songs. Brent-Gervais has achieved his goal.

Likewise, you leave thinking that Gervais has given us a happy ending because he, Gervais, wants to be liked, just as Brent does. It’s not the angry fuck-the-hicks sort of attitude Gervais exhibited during and immediately after The Office.

And you leave thinking that, like Brent, Gervais really wants to carry the show solely on his shoulders. The Office was an ensemble performance with some fantastic acting by Martin Freeman (!) as Tim and Lucy Davis as Dawn, as well as by Gervais. Life on the Road only cares about one character, as if Gervais wanted to prove he could do it all by his lonesome. But he can’t.

Ricky Gervais pulls his punches in this, not for the first time. Let Ricky be Ricky. Or, more exactly, Let Ricky be David.

We saw Hateful Eight in 70mm splendor in a packed and enthusiastic theater last night. Totally worth seeing. The three hours went by quickly. But it was less ambitious, and less cinematic, than his recent work. In fact, it is basically a stage play. It’s as if Tarantino was given license to take one of his set pieces — say the phenomenal thirty minute German tavern scene (about the scene) in Inglorious Basterds — and blow it out to three hours, although to be fair it’s actually two or three of those set pieces.

The characters are colorful and well-etched. I loved watching the actors act, as in every Tarantino film. The dialogue is Tarantinesque, although not as memorable as his very best. The violence is explosive and over the top. (“Is it a spoiler to say that there’s violence in a Tarantino film?”Is it a spoiler to say that there’s violence in a Tarantino film?)

But it’s also a genre film in a very unexpected genre for Tarantino. I’d say what genre but I think that really might count as a spoiler. Let me put it like this: it’s as if you’re watching Pulp Fiction and realize that, what the heck?, it’s really a version of Emma. (And that was definitely not a spoiler for either film.) It’s sort of cool that Tarantino did this, but also a bit confining for him. At more than 3 hours and in 70mm Cinerama, this is in some ways a small film.

While seeing the “Cinerama” banner took me back, oh, fifty years, I can’t say that what he went through — and what he forced theaters to go through — to show it in 70mm was worth it. There are a couple of shots that that had me think “Nice 70mm!” but had I not known that it was in 70mm, I simply would have said, “Nice shot!.” There were a few shots where the color was especially rich and beautiful, but, again, I wouldn’t have attributed that to anything except excellent digital cinematography had I not known any better. On the other hand, I also can’t see any real difference between an ordinary Mac screen and a Retina display. I’m glad Quentin got to do it his way, and I hope it makes him happy.

“Then there’s the question of what it’s about”Then there’s the question of what it’s about. Race and racism? Legal justice and frontier justice? Yes, I think so. But it doesn’t have easy lessons. Tarantino is totally a non-didactic filmmaker, unlike, say, Spielberg. He’s got his values, he’s got his characters, he puts them together, one of them will discourse on an unexpected cultural theory, one person’s brain matter is probably going to end up in someone else’s face, and that’s about it.

Why would we expect there to be more? For two reasons. First, the movie-making is so superbly crafted. We are completely in his thrall. That’s the experience of art. Second, the violence is so extreme that we want it to be justified by significance.

But violence serves the role of humor in Tarantino’s films. I’m not saying it’s funny, although it often is, and last night’s enthusiastic audience burst out in laughter at some of it. Me too. Tarantino uses violence not just to advance the plot, and not, I believe to show us the true effects of violence, for he skimps entirely on the effect violence has on its survivors. Rather, the “violence like a sudden joke snaps the audience out of the comfort that narrative flow provides”violence like a sudden joke snaps the audience out of the comfort that narrative flow provides.

Which is to say that I don’t think Hateful Eight is rigorously about anything, except perhaps the everyday chaos engendered when people who are unalike have to share a space, or, in this case, share a movie — except in this case, the chaos is amplified by people with guns and their own loose-triggered codes of behavior.

TripAdvisor is being wonky about letting me write a review for a restaurant it doesn’t have listed; it has me stuck in a loop, insisting that I confirm that it is in an unlisted city, which it is not. Anyway, here’s the review I would have posted there.

A local resident recommended Surya Mahal (Shop No A, 179, MI Road) as the pure vegetarian place he goes with his family. It is indeed a family restaurant, down to paper placemats with absolutely terrible jokes on them.

Everything was exceptionally delicious: richly flavored, nicely textured. We ate all of everything and left satisfied in every direction. I’m no expert on Indian food, but I’m going to stand by what I just said.

Plus the children running around were adorable.

The owner (or so we assumed) was very helpful and enthusiastic. He honored our counter-cultural request that the food not be very hot in the peppery sense; one of us is a wimp.

Total cost, including a large bottle of mineral water, was under 500 Rs. — about US$7.00.

One night when we woke up in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep (thanks to the lag of jets), I was thinking how, in my limited experience, almost all northern Indian food comes in lots of sauce or is a sauce itself. The following doggerel popped into my head:

Put on your galoshes‘Cause everything sloshes.

Except the banan-a, which is second to naan.

I had a third verse as well, but I eventually fell asleep and forgot it.

My wife and I just saw The Martian. Loved it. It was as good a movie as could possibly be made out of a book that’s about sciencing the shit out of problems.

The book was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. So I was ready to be disappointed by the movie. Nope.

Compared to say, Gravity? Gravity‘s choreography was awesome, and the very ending of it worked for me. (No spoilers here!) But, it had irksome moment and themes, especially Sandra Bullock’s backstory. (No spoilers!)

The Martian was much less pretentious, IMO. It’s about science as problem-solving. Eng Fi, if you will. But the theme that emerges from this is:

Also, Let’s go the fuck to Mars!

(I still think Interstellar is a better movie, although it’s nowhere near as much fun. But I’m not entirely reasonable about Interstellar.)

[NON-SPOILER ALERT: There are no spoilers in this that you wouldn’t get from the most general discussion of what the movie is about. Less, probably.] I saw the movie Whiplash on a plane yesterday. I thought it had some bright-colored acting and fantastic music, but was predictable. Every ten years or so there’s another movie about an inspiring teacher,. Sometimes the teacher is kooky or lovable. Sometimes the teacher is crusty or tough or very tough, but it’s all for the kids. Whiplash is a spin on that overall genre.

The acting was pleasantly hammy, as is the mode these days. And I’m longtime fan of J.K. Simmons. (Let’s not forget Cave Johnson.) But I ended the movie a bit disappointed. Elements of it were terrific. Overall: Saw it coming like a bridge after the second verse.

But today I’m remembering it more fondly. I’m going to suggest to my wife that she see it, and I’ll watch it again with her. Mainly because the music is fantastic: great performances, and great presentation of those performances. If you think you don’t like jazz, you should watch Whiplash just to make sure.

Dave Winer loves outlines. I do, too, but Dave loves them More. We know this because Dave’s created the Fargo outliner, and, in the way of software that makes us freer, he’s made it available to us to use for free, without ads or spyware, and supporting the standards and protocols that make our ideas interoperable.

Fargo is simple and straightfoward. You enter text. You indent lines to create structure. You can reorganize and rearrange as you would like. Type CMD-? or CTL-? for help.

Fargo is a deep product. It is backed by a CMS so you can use it as your primary tool for composing and publishing blog posts. (Dave knows a bit about blogging, after all.) It has workgroup tools. You can execute JavaScript code from it. It understands Markdown. You can use it to do presentations. You can create and edit attributes. You can include other files, so your outlines scale. You can includes feeds, so your outlines remain fresh.

Fargo is generative. It supports open standards, and it’s designed to make it easy to let what you’ve written become part of the open Web. It’s written in HTML5 and runs in all modern browsers. Your outlines have URLs so other pages can link to them. Fargo files are saved in the OPML standard so other apps can open them. The files are stored in your Dropbox folder , which puts them in the Cloud but also on your personal device; look in Dropbox/Apps/smallpicture/. You can choose to encrypt your files to protect them from spies. The Concord engine that powers Fargo is Open Source.

Out of the box, Fargo is a heads-down outliner for people who think about what they write in terms of its structure. (I do.) It thus is light on the presentation side: You can’t easily muck about with the styles it uses to present various levels, and there isn’t an embedded way to display graphics, although you can include files that are displayed when the outline is rendered. But because it is a simple product with great depth, you can always go further with it.